


Nothing In The Dark

by TheEmpressAR



Category: Whose Line Is It Anyway? RPF
Genre: Gen, Halloween, Spooky, ghost story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-06
Updated: 2020-04-06
Packaged: 2021-03-02 00:08:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,112
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23505889
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheEmpressAR/pseuds/TheEmpressAR
Summary: Colin Meets Death...
Comments: 3
Kudos: 2





	Nothing In The Dark

# "Yesterday upon the stair, I met a man who wasn't there. He wasn't there again today, Oh how I wish he'd go away."

And in the darkened alley lay

another man,

another day,

The street was dark the light was dim,

I do not think I imagined him.

The hollow sounds of footfalls echoed off the cobblestone pavement as Colin Mochrie walked down the empty street. He exhaled and saw his breath whisping out in front of him, eerie tendrils haloing his balding head. He was spooked but putting on a brave front, not showing his fear. He whistled a few notes, not really a tune, just something to remind him that he was still human, still alive, and not alone.

He paused for a moment. Was that a sound behind him? Was that a noise from around the corner? How long was this alley? Was there any end in sight? An empty tin can clattered out from an overturned garbage can, startling the already nervous man. He looked down as the can came to a noisy stop, rolling to his feet. Colin dismissed it thinking it was maybe a cat rummaging around looking for scraps. He lifted his head. 

Directly behind him close enough to touch him, close enough to breathe down the back of his neck, close enough to make the tiny hairs there stand up away from his skin, there stood the shadow of a man. His features barely visible save the light reflecting off of his bespectacled eyes. A cold deathly chill washed over Colin’s body as he swung around to face who might be there. The alley was vacant. 

Colin looked around him turning in each direction. He could have sworn there was someone behind him, someone there, but where could he have possibly gone in the mere seconds it took for him to look for something, anything. There was no one there. Colin shuddered, chiding himself for giving himself the creeps. Of course there was no one there. 

He shook off his feeling of uneasiness and continued to walk down the alley, hoping the end of it was in sight. He kept his head lowered, studying his feet and watching for any debris that may have been blocking his path. He no longer felt alone. 

From the brick walls surrounding him, he did not see the grasping, reaching hands of a person, a man, longing to take hold of his coattail, longing to touch the side of his face, longing for the solidness of Colin’s body to turn around to see him to see the shadows to know that it was not a dream, not his imagination. Colin walked past and the mirrored eyes watched as he continued to make his way down the cobbled path.

Colin stopped again, another sound drawing his attention away from the mesmerizing patterns on the brick as he avoided the trickles of moisture after the recent rain pooling in tiny puddles in the cracks. He had to keep his mind occupied and not allow it to wander off in the dark corners and shadows that surrounded him. There was a lone streetlamp in the distance and what looked like a connecting road at the end of the alley. Life was on that road. City sounds and the flickering lights of traffic were on that road. He knew he could make it there. The road that would take him home. The road that would lead him away from this forgotten alleyway. This feeling of dread and hollow sorrow. It covered him like a shroud. He was afraid to turn around and look back into the darkness. Afraid of what might be there. Of what he had left behind. He focused on the pool of light in front of him. He cocked his head then. There was someone standing there. 

From where he was standing, Colin could barely make out any features of the person in the pool of light. He could see someone blotted against the brightness; the features were the outline of a man. He was leaning against the post, still partially hidden in the shadows. Colin swallowed the growing lump of fear in his throat and took one cautious step after another toward the figure in the light. Perhaps he knew directions for which way was out. 

Colin approached the streetlamp with hesitation. The man in front of him did not appear solid. Maybe it was the way the light was playing with the shadows or the way the man seemed to blend in with them that made Colin think of absurd and foolish things like ghosts and things that go bump in the night. He shook his head and smirked to himself before striding forward with more confidence. With every step the lamplight seemed farther and farther in the distance. Where was he? The Twilight Zone?

Colin finally stopped before the lamppost, his hands in his pockets in a non-threatening manner. He didn’t know if he should be the one to speak first or if he should even speak at all. The man took a step forward out of the direct light and Colin noted with assuredness that he was indeed a solid being, not a phantom or figment of his unnecessary terror. The man smiled. “Hello…” His voice seemed to carry on the wind.

Colin studied the man for a moment. Inside his mind was turmoil. He didn’t know whether to run screaming in terror into the darkness from where he came as fast as he could to escape this man, as this intense panic he felt continued building in his chest or to fling himself completely at this stranger whom he had never met and cling to him and wrap himself up inside of his skin. There was an instant tug and pull sensation and it was driving him mad. 

“Do I know you…friend?” Colin asked a slight squeak at the end of his sentence registered the gnawing fear eating away his insides. He quickly glanced around him for an escape route, but looking behind him the alley where he had been walking all this time appeared to be eaten up by blackness and he could not make out any distinctive patterns in the brick walls or any objects on the bricked path. All that remained was the stranger in the lamplight. He looked in front of him at the road with life sounds and it was there…just beyond his grasp.

The stranger looked sadly at the man in front of him. He pulled a thread from his impeccable black pinstriped suit and adjusted his blood red tie. It was always the way with him. He took another step out of the pool of light adding to his solidity making him “real”. He was backlit by the streetlight and every detail from the coifed poof of hair at the top of his head to the glint on his glasses to the shine on his shoe was unmistakable, he was “here”.

He was really upset about this one. He longed for the companionship and the familiarity they had shared over the years, Colin doing his thing, he doing his own. Once or twice he had almost been in the position he was now, but thankfully it had never come down to this moment, and regretfully it was here…far too soon.

He was inches in front of Colin, his breath expectantly exhaling softly from his parted lips. A slight lift to his brow, the ever-present sorrow mixed with longing in his eye. He put a hand on Colin’s shoulder. “We have met once or twice…” His voice not really solid, not really hollow, eerily absent in the dark. Every time he spoke Colin felt it within his bones. He shuddered. The hand was ice cold.

“Who are you?” Colin asked with a childlike innocence. He felt as if he was in a dream, that at any moment he would wake up safe in his bed, at home, where he belonged. Not in some desolate alleyway with a stranger he already knew.

“Do not be afraid, Colin…” The man said. “It’s time.” He held out his hand beseechingly silently asking Colin to take hold. 

Colin looked from the hand to the face and back to the hand…a slow, sinking realization drifted down on him like the beginning of a snowstorm. Soft, fuzzy, flakes gently settling over his body until it covered him until his brain made him see. “It’s you…isn’t it…” He began to back away slowly, away from the hand, away from the person who was now shaking his head regrettably at his retreating form. He turn and ran.

“Colin…..Coooollliiiiinnnnn….” The voice echoed hauntingly behind him…getting farther and farther away with each footfall. The voice found its way into Colin’s heart as he did the only smart thing he could do…run toward the road. To the life. To the noise. To his home.

......................................................

“What…what time is it?” Colin said with a start as he jerked himself out of a sound sleep. He sat up rubbing his eyes and blearily looked towards his alarm clock. Six in the morning. He groaned and rubbed the back of his neck. The incessant knocking continued at the door. “Who could that be at this hour…?” Colin muttered still shaking off the remnants of a dream he struggled to remember. He put on his slippers and shuffled to the stairs.

“Alright…ALRIGHT…I’m coming…keep your pants on!” He shouted at the door. He was going to be very upset at whoever was waking him up at this ungodly time of day. In his haste he missed a step or something unseen caused his slipper to slide carelessly off of the top step and before Colin had a chance to catch himself he went head over feet down the dark stairwell and landed in a crumpled heap a the bottom of the stairs. He lay there panting and wheezing, the pain coursing through every pore of his being, his eyes glassy and wide, his head turned at an impossibly odd angle staring at the door in the hall. The knob began to slowly turn.

The door opened slowly, although it had been previously locked, and a figure stepped silently into the room. Colin could only see him from the waist down, his shiny black shoes moving deftly through the home coming to rest in front of him. Terror filled his senses once again. He couldn’t move. He couldn’t feel anything but the blinding white pain that washed over him in unending waves. He was scared to death…

A hand reached down and a voice spoke. The same voice from his dreams….How was this possible? “Do not be afraid, Colin…take my hand.”

“I…I can’t.” Colin’s words were barely audible, dying on his lips as he spoke them. He could not move his limbs twisted limply behind him. 

“Of course you can…don’t be silly.” Greg looked down at him again, smiling now. He was serene and calm, welcoming Colin.

“I’m afraid…” Colin said a tear forming in his eye.

“Am I really so bad? Am I really so frightening? Have I tried to hurt you? It isn’t me you’re afraid of…you’re afraid of the unknown…don’t be afraid. The running is over…it’s time to rest…give me your hand.” Greg said and Colin felt himself standing up, rising to his feet. Colin looked at him, shocked. How was this possible?

“But I don’t want to die…”

“Trust me…”

“No… No…” Colin whispered desperately all the while his hand outreaching to grasp Greg’s open hand, the warmth he would feel there.

“Colin…give me your hand.”

Colin placed his hand gingerly in Greg’s warm hand. The fingers were soft and smooth, very real, and very alive. Colin marveled as he gave it a little squeeze, smiling instantly. 

“There you see…no shock…no engulfment…what you fear would come like an explosion…like a whisper…what you feared was the end…the beginning…look…” Greg said pointing down. Colin turned his head to see his lifeless form at the bottom of the stairs; strangely he felt nothing for it. Nothing but a curiosity of what was to come.

“Of all the wonders that I yet have heard, it seems to me most strange that men should fear seeing that death, a necessary end, will come when it will come. Your Shakespeare said those words around the time I came for him.” Greg said as both he and Colin moved toward the door. Colin smiled and followed the stranger willingly.  
  
The End.


End file.
